


Now fill the world with music, love, and pride

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 084 gone awry, Accidental Time Travel, Agent Carter era, F/F, Gay Pride, Mentions of Deke XD, Pining, Pride Parades, Strategic Scientific Reserve, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23183854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: Piper was just trying to stop Daisy from touching the object of unknown origin, but now they're suddenly finding themselves in the right place but the wrong time. Misplaced 70 years into the future, Daisy convinces Piper that there's no harm in looking around.Turns out, it's a good day and a good time to be Proud.
Relationships: Agent Piper/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38
Collections: Women of the MCU





	Now fill the world with music, love, and pride

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gort/gifts).



> For robotgort in the Roaring 20s Rarepair Exchange. I hope you enjoy!

“So was Russia everything you dreamed it to be?” Daisy says, appearing just behind Piper as she finishes her checklist of the assorted crates and boxes piled up in front of her in the middle of the main office of the Strategic Scientific Reserve. The woman’s proximity immediately makes Piper blush internally, and she ignores Daisy’s question in order to stay on task.

“Help me move this down to the storage room,” Piper says, pointing at one of the heavier trunks. “Jemma wants all the objects of unknown origin under lock and key immediately.”

“You going to buy me a drink after and tell me all the stories?” Daisy says, planting one hand on the waist of her A-line brown skirt in a way that makes Piper ignore her harder.

“Anytime, Agent,” Piper says impatiently in response, grabbing the handle on one end of the trunk.

“Yes, Agent Uptight,” Daisy responds with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, assuming her place on the other side and grabbing the handle, gasping slightly at the trunk’s weight. “Where did you say you all found this stuff?” Daisy mutters, swinging in front of Piper to open the door to the hall.

“Some abandoned lab of Red Skull’s. You know, nothing fancy,” Piper says, finally allowing herself to smile at Daisy’s instantly-envious expression.

“I can’t believe Coulson sent me to DC instead of letting me go on that mission with you all,” she grumbles as they shuffle towards the storage room. “How come I always get the short straw?”

“Trust me, the flights on either end of Russia would have dulled your enthusiasm plenty,” Piper says, pausing to set the crate down while Daisy turns to unlock the door to the most secure storage room.

Inside, Piper unlocks the trunk, setting the keys aside before directing Daisy to add the boxes of documents to certain shelves while handling the more delicate cases herself.

“So what were all the Hydra B team scientists up to out there in Siberia?” Daisy says, reappearing at Piper’s elbow as she sets one of the cases on the nearest table.

“Fitz wasn’t sure about most of it,” Piper says, reaching for a label from the shelf under the table. “That’s why Jemma wants it locked up.”

Daisy pops the latches without asking permission, making Piper reach over to put a perfectly reasonable hand on her arm.

“Better not. Leave it for a more controlled time.”

“I’m just looking…” Daisy mumbles, opening the lid and then putting her hands behind her back.

The items inside seem to have been jostled a little during travel, and Piper moves them carefully with the end of her pen until she can see everything to write it all down. Fitz had warned them all to only handle these things with gloves in order to be safe, but Piper forgot to bring a pair in with her…

“This looks like something I used to play with,” Daisy says, pointing at a spherical silver device about the size of a baseball. “My dad had a weighted pair of steel balls like this—apparently they’re good for elders to keep their hands mobile…”

She’s reaching for it before Piper realizes it, and she barely reacts in time.

“Johnson, wait—” Piper lunges for Daisy’s arm, but she touches her at what seemed to be the exact same moment that Daisy touches the device…

The first thing that changes is the light. The yellow shadows of the storage room are suddenly brighter—a harsh, white light that makes Piper immediately squint. Daisy is still in front of her, the silver device still in her ungloved hand, and she looks as confused as Piper feels.

“What did you do?” she says, locking eyes with Piper through her equally squinted eyes.

“I didn’t do anything!” Piper snaps, releasing her arm. “You’re the one who touched it.”

She spins, looking around them. They are still in the storage room, but all the furniture is different. The shelves are gone, replaced with stacks of metal chairs and rows of flat, collapsible tables leaning against each other on metal carts. The confusing light is coming from directly above them—the ceiling that thirty seconds ago had bare, suspended bulbs now has a row of bright, long lights hidden behind cases that appear to be frosted glass.

“Well done, Johnson,” Piper sighs, throwing up her hands. “You just vaporized all of Simmons’s research. She’s going to annihilate you for this.”

Daisy is turning too, taking in the room with a dubious expression before looking back at the device in her hands.

“We should go find Simmons anyway. Tell her what this did.”

The two of them head towards the door with Piper leading, and she shoves the metal door open expecting to see the familiar linoleum and beige setup of the hall towards their office.

Nothing outside the door makes any sense.

The floors are coated with a short blue carpet. The walls are white. Everything is lit by more of the bright white lights. And none of the people in sight are even a little bit familiar.

“Are you seeing this too?” Daisy says slowly as she steps into the hallway beside Piper.

“Are you seeing a hall we’ve never seen before?” Piper asks with a sideways glance. “If so, then yes.”

Piper looks back into the storage room, which still looks different, and then at the device in Daisy’s hand. “Did it send us somewhere?”

“Look!” Daisy gasps suddenly, pointing with her eyes. Piper looks too and feels her brows shoot up. A young woman with olive skin and long, curly brown hair is coming towards them, staring at something flat and black in her hand. Piper doesn’t recognize her face, but the most noteworthy thing about her is definitely her clothes. She’s wearing a pair of tight, dark trousers, a pair of sandals that are barely straps over the tops of her feet, and a tight shirt without buttons with a colorful unicorn painted on it. Seeming to feel their gazes, the woman glances up at them as she approaches, taking in the two of them from head to toe in one look.

“Can I help you all?” she says, her hand with the black thing in it falling to her side. “You look lost.”

Piper opens her mouth but Daisy is quicker. “We’re looking for Dr. Simmons.”

“Who?” the stranger says, her brows pinching together.

“Dr. Jemma Simmons?” Daisy repeats. “She works here? Head of the scientific research department?”

The woman looks perplexed, and Piper notices that her makeup includes a rainbow of eyeshadow that sparkles beneath the lights.

“I don’t think you’re in the right place. But if you come with me, our receptionist can call around and help you get to the right place.” The young woman sets off without gesturing for them to follow, but Daisy and Piper instinctively trail after her.

“What’s that thing in her hand?” Daisy whispers when the stranger raises the black thing again to look at it. Colors dance on the face, but Piper can’t see much else.

“I don’t know. Another object of unknown origin to tell Jemma about.”

The hallway abruptly opens to a wider reception area, the same floor plan as their SSR office, but instead of Rose at her oak desk, it’s another stranger at a sleek metal-and-glass piece. There is a phone and a framed picture and for some reason a jar of lemons, but Piper doesn’t recognize any of the other objects taking up most of the space on the desk.

“Deke, these two are looking for someone whose name I’ve never heard before—could you help them get to the right place?” the strange woman says as they approach.

“Sure thing, Tess” the thin young man says, swiveling his chair in their direction. “Who are you looking for?”

“Dr. Simmons,” Piper answers.

“Dr. _Jemma_ Simmons,” Daisy corrects.

The man immediately turns towards the thing on his desk that has a keyboard that looks like that of a typewriter but is extremely flat, and the keys are quiet when he types. His eyes are on something flat and metal right standing upright right behind it.

“There’s no one with that name on staff here,” he says slowly, apparently reading something on it, “but I’ll go ahead and search the building directory.”

Daisy is shifting subtly around his desk, an action that makes him look up at her pointedly, and Piper catches Daisy’s sleeve to haul her back around.

“Uhm,” Daisy says, fumbling for a save, “I wanted to see the picture.”

The man doesn’t look convinced but he nods. “Okay there’s no ‘Jemma Simmons’ at all in the building directory, but I’ll search the yellow pages for you. You may just have come to the wrong address.”

“Whatever he’s typing on is already three different books?” Daisy whispers, nudging Piper with her elbow. “What _is_ it?”

“Sorry, there aren’t any ‘Jemma Simmons’ listed for NYC,” the man says a second later, looking up at them again. “Do you want me to search the tri-state area?”

“No thanks,” Piper says quickly. “We’ll figure it out. Is there a phone we could use?”

The man pushes the phone on the desk towards them, and Piper picks it up, hesitating over the foreign keypad before awkwardly punching in the number. Feedback squeals in her ear and a recorded female voice informs her that the number is not in service, so Piper immediately hangs up.

“Where’s the elevator?”

Turns out it’s right where it’s supposed to be, but it certainly looks different, inside and out. The lobby on the ground floor, unsurprisingly, looks totally different too, and Piper is about to haul Daisy out onto the street when she passes a television that…stuns. She’s so distracted that Daisy plows into her from behind, yelping as the device lets out a spark and shocks them both.

The two of them suddenly find themselves back in the lobby they’d entered on the way to work this morning, everything in place as it should be, with Bob the bellman at the door, Martin manning the elevator, Jannette behind the information desk…

“How did you do that?” Piper says, wheeling on Daisy.

“I don’t know, all I did was bump into you…”

Daisy mimics the gesture, touching Piper again with it, and with a zap, the world changes again.

“Stop doing that!” Piper snaps, grabbing at the device. They’re back in the _wrong_ lobby from before, and Daisy is so distracted that Piper wrestles the device from her hands easily. “I’m holding this from now on.”

“Are we in a movie?” Daisy says, staring around. “Look at the clothes. Look at the _cars_!”

Piper looks over her shoulder through the window towards the street, processing the same things as Daisy.

“I have no idea. We could be…”

But then Daisy is scurrying over to a rack of newspapers near the door and snatching one up. Her eyes immediately go wide.

“Piper come here.”

Leaning over her shoulder, Piper looks at the line where Daisy is pointing.

_New York Times_

_June 29, 2019_

Piper stares dumbly at the date for a long time, until Daisy shakes out the paper to see the full front page.

“Oh my god, Johnson, which button did you push?” Piper says, scrambling for the device in her hand.

“Piper, hold on—” Daisy says, catching her arm rather than the device. “If this is actually what it looks like, then what’s the harm of looking around?”

“Looking around?” Piper repeats in horror. “Daisy, are you _out of your mind_? What if we're stuck here? What if this thing is broken, and we can’t get back? There’s no Simmons here, there’s no—”

“Oh my god, Piper,” Daisy says, rolling her eyes and grabbing at the device. “All we have to do is—”

There’s a zap, and then suddenly they’re back in the old lobby.

“See?” Daisy says, and then squeezes the device again. The world flips back to the foreign lobby. “So what’s the harm in seeing what there is only a slim chance of us living long enough to see?”

Piper can feel Daisy’s excitement starting to rub off on her. Just a little. She sighs, looking down at the device in her hand.

“We have to be _very_ careful,” she says, leveling Daisy with a business-like glare.

Daisy’s smile widens. She pulls the device carefully from her hand and wraps her arms around it like she’s cradling a baby. “Sooo careful,” she concedes, starting towards the door again. “Let’s go.”

Just before the door, Piper stops short. “We don’t have our hats—"

“Or purses, or money,” Daisy reminds her with an unsettling amount of nonchalance, stepping into a revolving door that seems to be moving on its own. “So we’ll just look around and go back when we get hungry.”

The weather outside seems a bit warmer than it was forecast to be today, but then Piper reminds herself they’re not actually on that day anymore. Out on the sidewalk, the two of them stop and just stare in every direction for a moment, mouths hanging open.

“Look at the _cars.”_

“Look at their clothes!”

“Oh look—Macmillan’s is gone.”

“Why are so many people wearing rainbows?”

The two of them link arms—for safety, of course—and set off down the street at a slow pace, still stopping every few feet to stare at something else. At a newsstand, Piper takes in the plethora of titles and the unrecognizable faces of celebrities and models she’s never heard of. Most of the women on the covers are dressed in clothes that would get them arrested for public indecency, and several newspaper headlines are referencing some event called Pride that it seems will be happening tomorrow.

“Excuse me, can I look at that?” Daisy says, leaning into the window of the newsstand and pointing to the black thing in the worker’s hand, which is similar to the thing the girl upstairs had had.

“What, my phone?” the man says with an accent Piper can’t place.

“Yeah, sure,” Daisy says smoothly, and the man looks perplexed as he sets it on the counter between them.

“It’s not for sale,” he says sternly, keeping his fingers pinched around one end of it. “What do you need to see?”

“Uh…” Daisy mutters, staring wide-eyed at the screen, which changes in response to her touch. “I was looking for someone…”

“What’s their number?” the man says, pulling his phone back. “I’ll call them for you.”

“Sorry, we’ve already realized we don’t have it,” Piper said, tugging Daisy away.

“You two lost in time or something?” the man calls after them with a laugh.

Piper blushes and doesn’t turn around, but Daisy looks over her shoulder with a smile.

“How’d you guess?”

The owner isn’t the only one giving them funny looks as they resume making their way down the street, Piper’s arm linked through Daisy’s. At first, Piper assumes it’s because they forgot their hats, but eventually she realizes it must be their clothes. No one, literally no one, is dressed like them.

“Oh my goodness!” a stranger with a loud voice and a louder outfit says, running up to them so suddenly that they both jump. “You two look amazing! I love this cosplay. Are you vintage sapphics? How fun! Even your makeup is spot-on. Are you going to wear this tomorrow?”

Piper barely understands any of that sentence, but again, Daisy improvises like a natural. “Maybe!” she says with a tone so confident it almost matches the girl’s. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’ve got a whole other outfit planned,” the young woman says proudly, dramatically swishing the rainbow-striped cape she’s wearing over an outfit of denim shorts, sparkling suspenders, and a black t-shirt that says BORN THIS WAY in rainbow letters. “This is just for today. Oh, and I’m giving out stickers! Which one would you like?”

She offers her sparkly top-hat off her head, which so happens to have a zippered storage compartment in it, under which are a pile of circle-shaped decals of various color combinations. Daisy immediately leans forward and starts rifling through them, plucking out one that says PROUD in rainbow letters.

“I like this one,” she says, and the other woman grins.

“Love it. I’ve got more of that one if you two want to match!”

Daisy finds a matching sticker quickly and peels it off the wax paper backing, slapping it on Piper’s shirt just above her SSR pin.

“Thank you!” she says, and the woman smiles again.

“No problem! Keep on slaying!”

As they resume walking down the street, Piper tucks close as Daisy applies her own sticker to her shirt.

“Did you understand any of that?”

Daisy shakes her head. “Nope. But at least we fit in a little better now.”

They reach an intersection, and Piper spots a bookshop across the street that has a rainbow display set up in the window.

“Let’s go check that out,” she suggests, and Daisy seems to understand her reasoning, immediately following her.

In the shop, the front display is showing off titles and authors Piper has never heard of before, but Daisy immediately snatches up one with a rainbow cover titled _The Book of Pride._ She disappears behind it while Piper scans the collage of colors and new words, picking up a few for further investigation.

_A Queer History of the United States_

_The Gay Revolution: the Story of the Struggle_

_Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World_

_And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic_

_Fair Play: How LGBT Athletes are Claiming Their Rightful Place in Sports_

_Bisexuality in the Ancient World_

_Second Skins: the Body Narratives of Transexuality_

_Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights_

_M Is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book_

They both go quiet for a while, reading side-by-side, and Piper finds the children’s Pride ABC book most straightforward and helpful for learning the meanings of all these new words quickly, a strange mixture of feelings churning in her chest as she reads. Daisy has already moved on to another book when she finally looks up, but she suddenly catches Piper’s eye.

“So this…all this…” She looks around at the colorful decorations inside and outside the store. “It’s all about people celebrating…love.”

Piper is having trouble speaking, but she nods.

“Yeah. I think so.”

She would have happily spent the rest of their day in that bookstore figuring out all the years between the one they left and the one they found, but a colorful crowd suddenly sweeps past the store on the sidewalk, some waving flags of various colors, all of them smiling and singing along with recorded music pulsing out from the center. By unspoken signal, Piper and Daisy abandon their books and hurry out after them, catching each other’s hands as they are swept into the wave of celebration.

There are men holding hands with men and women holding hands with women, plenty of both men and women in scandalous outfits, lots of colorful stripes, and someone is carrying a large cordless radio that is playing loud songs that everyone seems to know the words to.

_“I was bo-orn this way! I was bo-orn this way! I’m on the right track, baby I was bo-orn this way! ...No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian transgender life, I’m on the right track, baby I was born to survive!”_

Piper finds herself smiling, her eyes watering for some reason, and Daisy squeezes her hand, catching her eye with a smile.

The crowd abruptly turns a corner, and the two of them are jostled as they fail to move in the same direction. Piper hears Daisy gasp as someone bumps her…

And suddenly they’re standing on a very different street.

The two of them are still holding hands, still wearing their decals, but the device in Daisy’s free hand is sparking and fritzing. Their surroundings are the familiar scene of Twelfth Avenue again, with a handful of cars sliding by in the early-afternoon sun. No more crowds, no more colors, no more joy.

For a moment, the two of them stare at one another in understood shock and sadness, and then finally Piper lets go of Daisy’s hand, reaching to slowly peel the sticker off her shirt.

“We should get back to the office.”

~

They don’t tell Simmons or Fitz what happened. Piper logs the device as an ‘object of unknown origin’, boxes it up carefully, and locks it in the thickest cabinet in the room. The two of them don’t discuss any of it with one another until the work day has ended and they’re leaving the lobby again, this time with their hats, bags, gloves, and jackets in place. Piper is sure that they’re both thinking of the same things as they walk, so she readily accepts Daisy’s invitation to dinner, ready for a chance to process everything.

Once they’re ensconced in a quiet booth at one of the less-trafficked restaurants near the office, Daisy sighs.

“That was really something,” she says quietly, carefully pulling her gloves off and setting them on the table.

“Yeah, it was,” Piper agrees, finally letting the events replay in her mind from start to finish.

“That society we saw is still a long way off,” Daisy says, her gaze on the table. “The book I was looking at said that the Pride Protest Parade didn’t start until the summer of 1969.”

Piper nods. “And the laws didn’t change nationwide until 2015.”

Daisy looks up at her, smiling a little.

“There were so many other things we should have looked up while we were in that bookstore. History, technology advances, world relations, World Series records—we didn’t even see get to see a map.”

Piper smiles to herself. “Well, it’s probably for the best. I’m afraid to even consider what it would be like to know too much about the future. To be a Cassandra in the middle of a changing world.”

Daisy nods. “You’re probably right. But…you saw the cars. The skyscrapers. The phones—Piper, that _phone_ …” The starry look in her eyes makes Piper smile helplessly. “I can’t believe the world’s going to get there before this generation is gone.”

Piper smiles a little wider. “Yeah. There’s a lot to look forward to.”

They fall silent again, cautiously avoiding one another’s eyes. Daisy eventually takes off her hat and shows Piper that she’s stuck her PROUD decal inside it.

“It gives me hope too, that there’s a time coming when people can be exactly who they are without apology.”

Piper looks carefully at Daisy, judging her sincerity, before taking a deep breath.

“When… _I_ could be exactly who I am.”

Daisy looks her in the eye and smiles.

“And I could, too.”

Piper’s heart stutters in her chest, and she feels her mouth fall open.

“You too?”

Daisy smiles and nods. “Yeah. I think the word they’ll use for it someday is _bisexuality_.”

Piper exhales shakily, smiling wider. “And I’ll just be a good old-fashioned lesbian. But it won’t be a word people use with shame.”

Daisy smiles, then puts her hand on the table near Piper’s where their fingers barely touch.

“But we don’t have to wait for a faraway future to start telling the truth and letting ourselves be that happy, do we?”

Piper, her heart still racing, cautiously moves her hand until their fingers overlap a little more. Daisy doesn’t pull her hand away.

“No, I guess we don’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from Lin-Manuel Miranda's [sonnet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0FhHVxvqBY) that he wrote for an acceptance speech after the Orlando shooting during Pride month 2016. It makes me cry every time I listen to him read it.
> 
> All the book titles mentioned are real books.


End file.
